Creating a Centaur: Aircall’s Jonathan Anguelov on Success, Failure and Simplicity

“Try, try, and try again,” this is Jonathan’s mantra for life, business, and investing. From humble beginnings to investing in property as a student, to building and now exiting a Centaur company, his journey is far from conventional. Join me today as I find out more about the challenges he encountered with Aircall, what he is doing now he has exited the company, and the lessons he wants to share with young founders.

From small-time Parisian property investor to big-time tech founder and telecom innovator.

So Jonathan, thank you very much for joining us. So let's start right at the beginning with the big news from last year, which is that Aircall became a so-called Centaur company. Well done! What did your journey to becoming the founder of this company look like?

It is the typical journey people think of. It's like in the movies, but it is a lot more sweaty, late nights, and a lot of hard work, to be honest. When we started back in 2014, no one really believed in us. We didn't have anyone in the team coming from the Telco business or anyone who even had experience in the tech business per se,  so we were not typical tech startup founders. We had to start from scratch. We wanted to revolutionize that industry – when I say it today, I smile… it was a crazy bet and the bet was to just make the Telco system work differently and to provide something different to the other tools that companies were using. For the first years, we had to convince our customers, but we also had to convince investors too. We raised quite a lot of amount of money over the years, about $220 million.The first time we raised about $900k we had to see dozens of investors, maybe hundreds of investors just to have investors at the table, because no one really believed in our journey, or in us. But things went pretty fast: we went from 0 to $1 million ARR in about 18 months, then from 1 to 3 in a year, 3 to 9, 9 to 18, 18 to 30, etc, to over $150 million ARR today, which is great. Let's face it: every series of fundraising was a pain. There was not an easy way to do it. There was a lot of sweat and a lot of doubts, but one thing that always worked in the team was the fact that we worked together, and we were always trusting the journey. I think it was the very strong vision of where we wanted to head that took us where we are today.

Where were you before you started Aircall?

I was a tiny entrepreneur working in Real Estate. I started buying small apartments when I was 19 years old,  the so-called staff apartments on the top floor of buildings in Paris.

How did you get into this?

I have a very hard family background. I grew up in a foster home starting at the age of 12 until I was 18 years old. My mother couldn't take care of me. And so I was placed in a foster family and I moved from families to foster homes and never really lived with my mother… real estate was just an ambition to get out of my situation. When I started to study I discovered that banks give loans to students so I requested a student loan and with that money instead of paying for my studies I bought my first apartment. And I did that about 10 times, so by the age of 22 I had 10 small apartments getting me about 5k a month, paying off my studies, my lifestyle,  and taking myself from a poor student to a normal student with a bit of cash like the rich kids –  but without parents.

Is that where your entrepreneurial spirit came from?

Yeah, of course. I mean I had to do everything on my own. I had no parachutes and no one to take care of me. My mother was a Bulgarian immigrant, speaking little French, and so I had to learn everything on my own. Somehow, living this hard life as a child made me extremely strong and extremely ambitious towards what I want to do and how I want to make things happen. Today, every day I'm living a dream because it's a child's dream that came true somehow.

What challenges did you face with Aircall and how did you overcome them?

Our journey with Aircall was fraught with challenges, particularly in telecommunications. Initially, we underestimated the complexity of integrating software with telecom infrastructure. Unlike standalone software development, marrying software with telecom services posed unique challenges. Ensuring seamless communication between software and telecom networks was essential for our product's success. For instance, ensuring that calls placed over the internet to GSM networks worked flawlessly was not easy.During the first four years of Aircall, from its inception until around 2018, our focus was primarily on resolving these technical hurdles. Despite experiencing rapid growth, reaching over 20 million in annual revenue by 2018, our product's functionality didn't meet our customers' expectations. This led to a dissatisfied customer base, which was a significant concern for us as founders and managers.We had to address the quality issues head-on. Our customer success team was overwhelmed with complaints, our sales team faced challenges due to customer dissatisfaction, and our technical team was constantly troubleshooting. It was a nightmare scenario internally, despite appearing to be successful from the outside. It was like pouring water into a glass with a hole in it… For this reason, at one point, we made the tough decision to halt sales temporarily for a few weeks to focus on rectifying these issues. This was a pivotal moment for us, as it allowed us to dedicate our resources entirely to fixing the product's shortcomings. our customers loved the concept of the product, even though they were unhappy with its performance. So, we had to align the concept with reality and make it work…With the tireless dedication of our entire team, which had grown to about 70 people at that time, we managed to resolve most of our issues by 2018. This marked a turning point for Aircall. We resumed selling with renewed confidence, and the company entered another phase of hyper-growth. However, overcoming these challenges wasn't just about fixing technical issues; it required a fundamental restructuring of our approach.We prioritized building a robust sales team with a clear focus on customer satisfaction. Each department within the sales team, from business development representatives to customer success managers, was meticulously structured and staffed with top talent. This emphasis on excellence in every role allowed us to sell at a high velocity and ensure customer satisfaction.Furthermore, our initial goal of simplifying phone systems evolved into a broader vision of revolutionizing how phone systems added value to sales and customer support teams. We achieved this by integrating our phone system seamlessly with existing tools used by companies, thereby enhancing efficiency and productivity. Our idea was simple: we needed to make everything work together and make it as simple as possible.While the journey was challenging, overcoming these obstacles strengthened our resolve and laid the foundation for Aircall's success in the future.

How did you manage this hyper-growth while trying to build and improve your product at the same time?

We separated the teams, ensuring that each team had a clear function. We were super focused and extremely demanding on the different teammates and on the quality of the product, in general, to ensure we achieved the highest quality of development possible. This allowed us to have teams focused on one problem at a time. We never wore blinders; we were always aware of everything that was happening. We maintained full transparency with our teammates, communicating clearly about our problems and achievements. Every day, we published the metrics on our Slack channel, allowing everyone in the company to see the growth, customer feedback, and any issues we were facing. We weren't just founders building the company; every employee acted like a founder, which contributed to where the company is today.

Tell me how did you meet your co-founders? How did you come together as a team?

Honestly, we were introduced by one of our first investors who said to him, "You need to meet Jonathan." When we met, we felt we were very different and at the same time, we complemented each other.What he has, I don’t have; some things I have, he doesn't have, and that makes us extremely complementary. And then the tech team joined us. So the two tech founders joined us, and we started with that stupid idea of revolutionizing an industry, especially a tough industry, which is the phone system industry. In the beginning, people were making fun of it because it's such a big bet, somehow, that it's always too big for you.

And how did you see this as an opportunity instead?

I worked in a bank before, doing internships during my studies. And I saw how the phone system was a pain. Every time we had a new employee, someone was coming with the phone, plugging it in, trying it, “It's not working, the call is not working.” "Wait, it's not the right number you have there. I have to get your new number." When you spoke to a customer, it was recorded because I was in finance, but if you wanted to listen to the recording, you had to go on another computer to listen to it and you couldn't hear anything. Those computers were extremely slow; the whole system was broken and really old school. And I was like, "That cannot exist." And at the same time, I have always been a fan of buying things online. And so, very often I needed to call the customer service department, and I was always getting that same question, "Hey, what's your customer number, please?" on the call. And I was like, "I don't know. I mean, I'm calling you with my number. Do you not see my number recorded in your system?”Your phone system needs to communicate with the other tools and vice versa. And so when we started, somehow we knew the pain existed, and we were able to provide that system with a very, very small additional cost and sometimes not even an additional cost to the current system. So basically, we're coming with a better thing at the same price, more or less, and just bringing so much value to the customers. And there we are.

What would you say were the major turning points – when you got the investments from Goldman Sachs…

Every single step was significant, but there wasn't a single turning point thanks to investors. The turning points I have in mind are when we fixed our quality issues, as I mentioned earlier when we started to bring a strong leadership team on board, with experienced people heading departments. This changed the way the company functioned, its ability to execute, and so on. The rest was just this high-velocity time. Honestly, this journey was incredibly intense, going through different pains and encountering different types of people. In the beginning, you have these early-stage people, super motivated, super founder-driven. Then you need to transition to different types of people as the company grows. Some are resistant to change, preferring to report only to the founders. As the company changes and expands, introducing multiple levels of management, you inevitably part ways with some of the early team members who helped shape the company. I'll always have a special appreciation for those individuals because they played a vital role in our journey, even if they chose to pursue other opportunities. I'm proud of their contributions, and to this day, I'm still in touch with most of them. "And what's truly remarkable is that all my first 20 employees are now entrepreneurs themselves. That's truly inspiring. It's how we've formed the Aircall Mafia, with these former Aircall employees now pursuing their entrepreneurial dreams.

You’ve now left Aircall. What led to that decision? How did you decide that it was time for you to leave?

Yeah, after 10 years of intense dedication and navigating the company through significant growth, we found ourselves at a pivotal moment, preparing for the next phase of our journey from $150 million to a billion-dollar revenue. At this stage, we realized that there are individuals who have expertise in scaling companies to that level, perhaps better suited than us, the founders who started from scratch. We saw the value in bringing in new perspectives, fresh energy, and a focus solely on the future, unencumbered by the weight of the past. Additionally, after a decade of hard work, I had to ask myself some tough questions about my readiness for the next chapter. It was actually one of my investors who prompted me to reflect on this decision. They pointed out that while the company was thriving, the road ahead, whether it be an IPO or another form of expansion, would demand another significant commitment of time and energy. As I contemplated the prospect of another 10 years of such dedication, I realized that perhaps I was not fully prepared for it.That realization led me to consider alternative paths. Alongside my tenure at Aircall, I had been nurturing another venture—a real estate fund. It all began in 2019 when I divested all my real estate holdings to purchase my first hotel in Paris, a 30-bedroom property, with my co-founder. This marked the inception of I guess So Capital, our real estate venture. Our vision was to build a portfolio of hotels and commercial properties, creating a sustainable source of income for our future. Over the years, we diligently grew the company, amassing over $60 million in capital and assets. As the real estate venture matured and became increasingly successful, I began to feel the pullback toward the world of entrepreneurship. Aircall had evolved into a corporate entity, and while I appreciated the journey, my heart belonged to the startup world, where I could build something from the ground up, navigating the highs and lows of the entrepreneurial journey.

What does life and work look like now for you?

I work as much as when I was at Aircall, to be honest, very similar hours. What's different is that I'm probably spending about 20% of my time outside the office, overseeing the work being done on the buildings we bought because we are refurbishing everything. Before our call, I visited a hotel in the rain, so it's less prestigious and more about spending time in very dodgy and sometimes decades-old, unrenovated places. Recently, we decided to open the fund to investors so they can make the same deals as we do. In the next couple of weeks, we're going to announce that we are open to co-investors to invest with us in the infrastructure, buildings, or assets we buy in general. So there's this big challenge of building a whole platform where things are automated and people can invest through us, which also helps us accelerate because real estate is a different business. It's cash-consuming, where cash is key. You need to have cash to do deals, and unfortunately, I'm cash-limited, so it's great to have external investors.

What's your goal with the fund?

Creating a billion-dollar fund with a billion dollars of assets and revolutionizing the small hotel industry in France and all over the world. There are these very old and tiny hotels that have been owned for decades by the same people who usually do not invest much in renovating them. One of my goals is to renovate all those hotels, make them beautiful, make them work great, and offer a different type of experience to people who visit cities like Paris or France in general.

You’re also an angel investor now too. Can you tell me about some of the investments that you made lately and why?

I have over 40 companies in my portfolio that I invested in over the past five years. I'm very, very SaaS-focused, of course, because that's what I believe in, and somehow so what I know and what I want to invest in, of course, I invested also in a few other types of companies like food tech, a little bit of web 3 that I'm not proud of, but yeah, I'm very SaaS-focused. It takes a lot of time to be an investor or business angel because it takes time to analyze. It's very difficult, but I will keep doing that because I believe that innovation needs capital and I can innovate because of capital. So I will still be doing that for the next couple of years on the side.

Would you say that your perspectives on life and success have changed since Aircall reached unicorn status? Has it changed your outlook on life and what you want to do with your time?

No, honestly, nothing has changed. My perspective is that if you work hard on something and if you believe in what you do, you will always succeed. I don't know anyone who has been working like hell, has been ambitious, has been accepting to fail and rebound, and has started over and over, but has not succeeded. So it's just excuses. So reaching that status is something I never thought we would do. But once you get there, you're like, okay, these are all the challenges you have to overcome, and there are the things you need to reach. And somehow, with the years, I think I've become more and more humble because your success is not 100% driven by yourself. It's driven by a team, by your capacity to lead a team, to have a team that is behind you, and to make sure that everyone goes in the same direction. I think I appreciate simplicity more than ever. I like simple things more than ever. I’m prepared to have a simple life and a very complex, messy life. Whatever. I like to be surrounded by my friends. I don't travel much anymore. I love cars, so I have a nice car. I love real estate, so I have a nice apartment. But otherwise, apart from that, I still drive this twenty-year-old scooter from BMW that has a roof that is ugly as hell, but that is very practical when you are in the rain. And I just want to make things different and I love to build things, so I'm back at it.

With that message and that mindset of trying to show other people that it's possible, what advice do you have for young entrepreneurs who want to change the world?

I would say just believe in yourself. Never take failure for granted, and never accept it. It's never a failure, it's a lesson. If you're able to accept this, then when you fail at something, you actually learn something. This is going to make you move forward. You just learned what you shouldn't do, or you just learned that things don't work that way. So now you've got to do it differently and again and again. The thing that always gets into my mind, and I think about it all the time, is that I don't know anyone who has been trying, and trying, again and again, and didn't succeed. I have examples of people stopping, and that's it. So just try, try, and try again.

Thank you for your time, Jonathan.